The issue is that Motorola had previously agreed to put its patented technology into standards in those areas. In order for different tech products to work well with each other—like a smartphone connecting to a home router, for example, or a website displaying an embedded video—they all must follow the same technical standards, which sometimes inevitably involves the use of companies' patents.

Typically the owner of patents on such technology must license it to anyone who wants it, for a very small fee—sometimes pennies or fractions of a penny per unit. It's a practice called FRAND, or fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms.

Motorola was trying to charge its competitors like Microsoft a lot of money to gain access to patents covered by FRAND agreements. After Google bought Motorola, it continued the battle. Pundits even said that Google bought Motorola mostly for access to these patents, so it could tie up rivals in court or maybe even get injunctions against their products.

Apple had filed similar complaints last year against Motorola in Europe, too.

Today, the FTC has forced Google to stop "extortion" level fees on patents covered by FRAND and to drop the ITC battles, FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a press conference.

That's good news for the tech industry. Had Google been allowed to ditch FRAND like that, it would have set a dangerous precedent for all tech products.

While there's plenty about today's ruling that Microsoft won't be happy about—namely that the FTC is not going to make Google change some of its search-engine practices—when it comes to FRAND, Microsoft walks away a big winner.

"We’ve agreed with the FTC that we will seek to resolve standard-essential patent disputes through a neutral third party before seeking injunctions. This agreement establishes clear rules of the road for standards-essential patents going forward."

The FTC will allow the public to comment on its investigation into Google's FRAND practices for the next 30 days, it says.